Chancellor calls his role in election campaign 'not the one I would have liked'

Philip Hammond has refused to say how long he believes Theresa May will remain in number 10 as he criticised the way the election campaign was run.

The Chancellor, who was barely visible in the run up to the June 8 vote, said the Conservatives would have "probably done better" if they had focused on its economic record.

Mr Hammond said his role in the campaign had not been the "one I would have liked it to be".

He told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "I'm not going to repeat to you the private conversations I had with Theresa May on Friday.

"Yes, it's true that my role in the election campaign was not the one I would have liked it to be.

"I did a lot of travelling around the country. I met lots of very interesting people, I heard lots of interesting stories.

"I would have liked to have made much more of our economic record, which I think is an excellent one, creating 2.9 million new jobs, getting the deficit down by three quarters."

Asked if Mrs May's former aides Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill had kept him off the airwaves, he replied: "I'm not going to speculate about what happened inside the campaign leadership team.

"The end result is, in my judgment, we didn't talk about the economy as much as we should have done.

"We didn't put enough energy into dismantling Jeremy Corbyn's economic proposals and his spending plans, which would be catastrophic for this country and we will now do that."

Asked how long Mrs May had left in number 10, he replied: "I think what the country needs now is a period of calm while we get on with the job at hand."

"Theresa is leading the Government and I think the Government needs to get on with its job."

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